ly let the material interests once
get a firm footing, and they are bound to impose the conditions on
which alone they can continue to exist. That's how your money-making is
justified here in the face of lawlessness and disorder. It is justified
because the security which it demands must be shared with an oppressed
people. A better justice will come afterwards. That's your ray of hope."
His arm pressed her slight form closer to his side for a moment. "And
who knows whether in that sense even the San Tome mine may not become
that little rift in the darkness which poor father despaired of ever
seeing?"

She glanced up at him with admiration. He was competent; he had given a
vast shape to the vagueness of her unselfish ambitions.

"Charley," she said, "you are splendidly disobedient."

He left her suddenly in the corredor to go and get his hat, a soft, grey
sombrero, an article of national costume which combined unexpectedly
well with his English get-up. He came back, a riding-whip under his arm,
buttoning up a dogskin glove; his face reflected the resolute nature of
his thoughts. His wife had waited for him at the head of the stairs, and
before he gave her the parting kiss he finished the conversation--

"What should be perfectly clear to us," he said, "is the fact that there
is no going back. Where could we begin life afresh? We are in now for
all that there is in us."

He bent over her upturned face very tenderly and a little remorsefully.
Charles Gould was competent because he had no illusions. The Gould
Concession had to fight for life with such weapons as could be found at
once in the mire of a corruption that was so universal as almost to lose
its significance. He was prepared to stoop for his weapons. For a moment
he felt as if the silver mine, which had killed his father, had decoyed
him further than he meant to go; and with the roundabout logic of
emotions, he felt that the worthiness of his life was bound up with
success. There was no going back.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Mrs. Gould was too intelligently sympathetic not to share that feeling.
It made life exciting, and she was too much of a woman not to like
excitement. But it frightened her, too, a little; and when Don Jose
Avellanos, rocking in the American chair, would go so far as to say,
"Even, my dear Carlos, if you had failed; even if some untoward event
were yet to destroy your work--which God forbid!--you would have
deserved well of your country," Mrs